Samphire tempura with fish and spicy sauce

Spotted some samphire in the supermarket so bought some on a whim.  Looked at a few recipes, and was tempted by some aspects of this recipe.  It is based around crab and has a many step recipe, but I took a few key aspects from it to make a quick and easy supper.

I made a chili sauce by frying two fat cloves of garlic with some chopped chili and chopped rosemary, stirred in a heaped teaspoon of caramelised onion marmalade I had been given for a present, the zest and juice of a left over quarter of a lemon,  half a teaspoon of ketchup and some water.  I cooked this just to bring all the flavours together and blitzed it smooth.

Tempura samphire
700g samphire, rinsed
50g rice flour
cold water

Mix the rice flour and cold water together together to make a slurry - the recipe says the consistency of double cream.  I just made it thick enough that it lightly coated the samphire.

I used a small heavy-bottomed stainless steel pan to cook these in rather than getting my deep fryer out for such a small quantity of food.  I put about 1cm of vegetable oil in the pan and heated until a blob of batter dropped in fizzed and cooked quickly but didn't burn.

Put a few pieces of samphire into the batter, then lift each one out and place carefully in the hot oil.  Tongs make this task easy. I found they worked best when each strand was put in separately - it cooked quicker, looked nicer and made a more crunchy cooked product.  Take the samphire out of the oil when the batter begins to go golden.  Place on kitchen paper to drain.  Repeat until all the samphire is cooked.  I recommend wearing a long sleeved garment to protect your arms as the oil will spit when you put the wet samphire in.

I served this with fish (salmon and haddock depending on preference) which only took 3 minutes in the microwave each from frozen, baked potato, sliced tomato and the chili sauce.